Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/877736
Members of '82 championship team saluted With Pitt returning to Beaver Sta- dium for the :rst time in nearly two decades, the time was right for an- other reunion of Penn State's 1982 na- tional championship team. Dozens of PSU football alumni returned to cam- pus on Sept. 9, including quarterback Todd Blackledge, who was calling the game as a member of ABC's broadcast team, to take part in a 35th anniversary celebration of the Nittany Lions' :rst national crown. The Lions defeated the Panthers that year, 19-10, completing a 10-1 regular season and earning an invita- tion to the Sugar Bowl, where they would go on to face Georgia for the championship. A number of the key players on that team had arrived on campus in the wake of the Nittany Lions' devastating loss to Alabama in the '79 Sugar Bowl, including Blackledge, tailback Curt Warner and wide receiver Gregg Gar- rity. Harrisburg Patriot beat writer Ronnie Christ dubbed them Joe Pa- terno's "Sugar Babies," and they :- nally reached college football's summit with a 27-23 victory over the Bulldogs. ■ CLASS REUNION Former Penn State players gather for a team photo during a celebration of the Lions' first national title. Photo by Steve Manuel watching Penn State games and I admire Coach Paterno,' and he invited Jackie and myself over for dinner. And we got in his car and he drove us over. When we went up to his house, we expected a much nicer house. It turned out the house we saw was the guardhouse. He sent us a Christmas card every year after that." Fusina was the consensus All-America quarterback that year and won the Maxwell Club Award as the outstanding player in college football. He missed win- ning the Heisman Trophy by only 87 votes in what was the closest margin in 14 years and actually had more first-place votes than Billy Sims, the Oklahoma running back who won. Fusina laughed when he recalled the Heisman circumstances. Nowadays, the top five candidates are flown to New York for the announcement of the winner on a hyped-up nationally televised program. Back then, the winner was called on the telephone, and the formal presentation dinner was held later. "The papers had mentioned me [as a possible winner] but I had not given it much thought," Fusina said. "My room- mate, Tony Petruccio, and I were getting ready to go out for breakfast at The Diner when I got a telephone call about finish- ing second. We joked around about it and then went out to eat. I was sort of sur- prised because I did not have a very good year statistically. But our team did well,